Detection of Brucellae in peripheral blood mononuclear cells for monitoring therapeutic efficacy of brucellosis infection.

BACKGROUND: Brucellosis is one of the most severe widespread zoonoses caused by the Gram-negative bacterium Brucella species. The diagnosis and clinical assessment of human brucellosis are very important for the management of patients, while there is a lack of effective methods to detect Brucellae. Classical culture of Brucella species is time consuming and often fails. A simple and sensitive assay is needed for diagnosis of Brucella infection and monitoring of treatment in man. METHODS: Blood samples and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were collected from 154 patients hospitalized for brucellosis. Brucella antibodies were detected by Rose Bengal Plate Test (RBPT), Standard Tube Agglutination Test (SAT) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Intracellular Brucellae were detected by blood culture and immunofluorescence staining (IFS). RESULTS: Among 154 brucellosis patients, 59.7% (92/154) were antibody reactive by RBPT, 81.8% (126/154) by SAT and 95.5% (147/154) by ELISA, respectively. Only 3.2% (5/154) of patient blood samples resulted in positive Brucella culture, while 68.8% (106/154) carried IFS detectable Brucella antigens in PBMCs. Gender (P = 0.01) but not age (P > 0.05) was a significant risk factor. The frequency of intracellular Brucella antigens was similar between patients receiving different treatment regimens (P > 0.05). However, a significant decrease of intracellular Brucellae was observed only in patients with acute brucellosis after the third course of treatment (P < 0.05), suggesting that current regimens to treat chronic brucellosis were not effective. CONCLUSIONS: IFS appears a sensitive assay for detection of Brucella antigens in PBMCs and could be used for diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring of brucellosis in clinical practice

Prognostic significance of systemic immune inflammation index in patients with urothelial carcinoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis

ObjectiveThis review assessed the prognostic significance of the systemic immune inflammation index (SII) in patients with urothelial carcinoma.MethodsWe performed a systematic review and cumulative meta-analysis of the primary outcomes according to the PRISMA criteria, and assessed study quality. Seven databases were searched: Embase, PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang, and SinoMed, from the creation of each database until October 2024.ResultsThe meta-analysis included 31 studies, including 14,437 patients with urothelial carcinoma. A low SII was significantly associated with better recurrence-free survival (RFS) (HR = 1.37, 95%CI (1.19, 1.56), P &lt; 0.05), cancer-specific survival (CSS) (HR = 1.87, 95%CI (1.50, 2.34), P &lt; 0.05), and overall survival (OS) (HR = 1.42, 95%CI (1.23, 1.64), P &lt; 0.05). In addition, subgroup analysis found that higher SII was associated with poorer prognosis regardless of treatment regimen, tumor type, or SII cutoff, and that high SII was an important prognostic biomarker in the UC population.ConclusionA low SII may be associated with better RFS, CSS, and OS. The SII can be used as a is a potentially noninvasive and promising prognostic indicator for urothelial carcinoma; however, further studies with appropriate designs and larger sample sizes are needed to verify these findings

Evaluation of Reactivity of Monoclonal Antibodies Against Omp25 of Brucella spp.

Brucellosis is a serious zoonosis occurring mainly in developing countries, and its diagnosis is largely dependent on serologic detection and bacterial culture. In this study, we developed the murine monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against a conserved and major outer membrane protein 25 (Omp25) of Brucella species (B. spp.) for use in clinical diagnosis. The mAbs to Omp25 were produced by hybridoma technique, which were utilized for developing various immunoassays for detection of Brucellae, including Western blot (WB), enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), immunochemical staining (ICS), immunofluorescence staining (IFS), and flow cytometry assay (FCM). A number of five mAbs (2B10, 4A12, 4F10, 6C12, and 8F3) specific to Omp25 were selected, including 2 IgG1, 2 IgG2a, and 1 IgG2b. Among them, mAbs 6C12, 8F3, and 4A12 reacted highly with B. melitensis (M5-90), B. abortus (S19, 104M, and 2308), and B. suis strain (S2). No cross-reactivity with Yersinia enterocolitica O:9, Salmonella spp., and Escherichia coli was found. By mapping Omp25 epitopes, mAb 6C12 was found as reacting with a semi-conformational epitope, and mAbs 4A12 and 8F3 as recognizing a different linear epitope, respectively. The paired mAbs were tested for detecting Brucella species, suggesting that 8F3 was suitable for solid phase capture and 6C12 or 4A12 was suitable for conjugation with HRP for detection of Brucella Omp25 in ELISA. The FCM was established by mAb 6C12 for detecting intracellular Brucellae-infected peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from brucellosis patients. In conclusion, mAbs against Omp25 are precious reagents for detection of Brucellae in clinical samples with various immunoassays. mAb 6C12-based FCM could be potentially used for the monitoring of therapeutic efficacy for brucellosis in clinical practice

Effects of complex graphite-like carbon coating on gear vibration noise

In this paper, the effects of substrate surface roughness and the addition of yttrium, cerium and tantalum on thickness uniformity of graphite-like carbon (GLC) coatings on gears were studied by magnetron sputtering method using mosaic targets. And noise reduction effects of gear pump deposited with complex GLC coatings were evaluated at different rotate speeds. The results showed that target-substrate distance, sputtering angle and surface roughness had influences on thickness uniformity of GLC coatings on gear. The introduction of elements Y, Ce and Ta into GLC coatings could effectively improve their thickness uniformity. The complex GLC coating with optimal thickness uniformity on gear exhibited significantly reduction effect for gear noise and the reduction effect for axial vibration was better than that of radial vibrations. Compared with uncoated gears, the noise for the coated gears was decreased by 10 dB at 2000 rpm. Good high-frequency noise reduction was obtained, which could be decreased by 19 dB in the range of 4000–10,000 Hz. Keywords: Thickness uniformity, Vibration characteristic, Gear pump, Magnetron sputtering, Graphite-like carbon coatin

Study on the property of low friction complex graphite-like coating containing tantalum

In order to enhance equipment lifetime under low oil or even dry conditions, tantalum was introduced into the graphite-like coating (GLC) by sputtering mosaic targets. The results showed that the introduction of Ta obviously reduced the friction coefficient and hardness of the GLC, while improved the wearability. When the atomic percentage of Ta was larger than 3%, the steady friction coefficient was lower than 0.01, suggesting the coating exhibited super lubricity. When the content of Ta was about 5.0%, the average friction coefficient was 0.02 by a sliding friction test under load of 20 N in unlubricated condition. Its average friction coefficient reduced by 75%, compared with that of control GLC (0.0825). Keywords: Tantalum, Sputtering, Super-lubrication, Complex GLC coating, Tribological propert

Exfoliation at the liquid/air interface to assemble reduced graphene oxide ultrathin films for a flexible noncontact sensing device

Reduced graphene oxide ultrathin films are fabricated by a reproducible exfoliation method at the liquid/air interface, and they show high transparency, tunable sheet resistance, uniform electric conductivity, and structural homogeneity over a large area. A flexible relative humidity sensing matrix is demonstrated and it is shown to be excellent for close proximity sensing without touching it. This method opens up a novel avenue for future human–machine interaction applications

Dual-Branch Network with Hybrid Attention for Multimodal Ophthalmic Diagnosis

In this paper, we propose a deep learning model based on dual-branch learning with a hybrid attention mechanism for meeting challenges in the underutilization of features in ophthalmic image diagnosis and the limited generalization ability of traditional single modal deep learning models when using imbalanced data. Firstly, a dual-branch architecture layout is designed, in which the left and right branches use residual blocks to deal with the features of a 2D image and 3D volume, respectively. Secondly, a frequency domain transform-driven hybrid attention module is innovated, which consists of frequency domain attention, spatial attention, and channel attention, respectively, to solve the problem of inefficiency in network feature extraction. Finally, through a multi-scale grouped attention fusion mechanism, the local details and global structure information of the bimodal modalities are integrated, which solves the problem of the inefficiency of fusion caused by the heterogeneity of modal features. The experimental results show that the accuracy of MOD-Net improved by 1.66% and 1.14% over GeCoM-Net and ViT-2SPN, respectively. It can be concluded that the model effectively mines the deep correlation features of multimodal images through the hybrid attention mechanism, which provides a new paradigm for the intelligent diagnosis of ophthalmic diseases